1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to a method and apparatus for conducting a transaction and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for selecting one or more supplemental products or services to offer for sale to a customer during a transaction.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Most stores or merchants that are visited by customers have one or more point-of-sale terminals, such as cash registers. Store cashiers and check out clerks often use point-of-sale terminals for calculating the total price of a purchase for one or more products and/or services and the amount of change due to a customer. Some point-of-sale terminals track purchases made and adjust a database of stored inventory accordingly.
In many situations, a merchant may desire to offer to sell a customer or user a product or service in addition to the product(s) and/or service(s) being purchased by the customer or as a replacement for one of the product(s) and/or service(s) being purchased by the customer while the customer is shopping at the merchant or shopping on-line via a merchant's World Wide Web site. Some prior art transaction systems exist. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,055,513 issued to Katz et al. discloses a method and apparatus for effecting commercial transactions at remote locations over communications networks and for selecting and offering an upsell transaction.
Unfortunately, despite the state of the art in point-of-sale and on-line transaction systems, there remains a need for a customer independent method and apparatus for conducting transactions for products and services and for determining a supplemental product or service to offer a customer during a transaction, either in addition to the products and/or services the customer is purchasing or as a replacement to one or more of the products and/or services that the customer is purchasing. The supplemental product selected may be based on the products or services that the customer is currently purchasing.